If the gaming community wants to change the microtransactions bullshit model they need to boycott this game. This is Star Wars and EA, it doesn’t get any more AAA and big budget marketing tie in as it gets. It’s a perfectly timed and marketed launch.
So they are expecting massive sales. If people boycott it could change the industry. If people buy it anyway we are all screwed, it will send the message we like loot boxes to unlock gameplay.
This is the game, this is the time. Reddit gave us a huge negative backlash publicity that all the major news outlets picked up. The question will be, will gamers do anything with that momentum, or waste it?
I love Star Wars but I hate this design decision. I’m boycotting.
Gamers overall have always had a strong sense of entitlement. Maybe in the earliest of early days, when developers were single individuals selling zip-lock bagged games from their cars, it might have been reasonable to expect developers to be in it for the love of it. That ceased to be true, oh, about a microsecond after it became clear there was a good deal of money to be made in this business. From that point on, companies are in business to make money, not make game per se. Nothing wrong with that at all, but people still act as if somehow games are supposed to be first and foremost some sort of social service, rather than commodities.
I can only assume that EA knows its financials and knows its business. That is, all the stuff with microtransactions. loot boxes, and what not must be making them money, and hence are good business practices for their stakeholders. Why on earth would they stop doing this? Unless, of course, as others have noted, gamers actually stop paying money for stuff they say they loathe. But that’s been a constant in the gaming world, too, forever. Gamers say they they will boycott this or that, but they always (in the aggregate) cave and buy anyhow. Until that stops, no company is going to plug up the revenue stream.
I too would rather have a return to games as self-sufficient products rather than services, for the most part. I’d also like to see in-game transactions, DLC, and all the rest toned down dramatically. But it ain’t gonna happen because it works, plain and simple. Otherwise, it wouldn’t happen.
I can almost guarantee that even if every Redditor and forum poster follows through on their vows to not buy this game or cancel their preorders, it would be a tiny minority of the audience. Even with all the complaints about a lack of content, the first game sold gangbusters.
I figure that if there are whales enough for Star Citizen, good money says that all the protests will mean very little. People are going to open their wallets.
Yes, EA has had crap messaging and the loot box thing is … uh, there… but the game itself learned from all the problems of Battlefront 1 and it’s a damn blast to play.
Sure if you hate Battlefield style big open map, lots of players simulaneously active games aka “oh noes I died again because there were a lot of players on the map shooting weapons” you won’t like this. But this game is freakin’ SOLID in a way that BF1 was absolutely not.
Having only played a few hours of the beta, game looks and sounds great! But the loot boxes and cards system was confusing and it sounds like the finished version isn’t much better.
The only thing I really object to in the cards system, is getting stuff that you aren’t playing. They do have the 3 classes of boxes you can buy with the in-game generated credits:
troopers
starfighter
heroes
So you can kinda pick one of those areas to focus on at least.
In the streams I have watched today, there is a lot of dying to players with full blue and green load outs which is the maximum you can have at low level (and a smattering of purple cards from pre-order). It seems there are those that have no issue at all with a pay to win leg up on others.
When I first got my xBox One 2 or 3 years ago, Destiny 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Star Wars Battlefront and Fantasia were my initial purchases.
I played a few hours of Battlefront and dropped it completely. Load times were dreadful, and while there were some fun initial moments, it’s been gathering dust for years. Only thing I really played was the single player, and Destiny eclipsed it as soon as I started in on that.
I wanted to play a Star Wars game, but it wasn’t it. Maybe MP would have been better, but (Destiny aside), I’m not too much for MP.
I’d probably only get this for the SP stuff, and if I have to grind past the single player campaign to get a good Star Wars experience, I’ll be waiting for it to drop to the $15/20 range at least - and the grind/loot crate experience sounds absolutely awful to me.
I’ve read that, but from what I’ve seen today, it’s not true. Or it’s not implemented yet. At least that is judging from the “killed by” star card screen for both streamer’s that bought in and those that didn’t.
I’m so torn. I enjoyed the first game a lot. It was a cornucopia of audio and visual delight straight from my imagination and toy box of days gone by. However, I can’t help but feel shame at the idea of supporting this nearly completely naked pay to win/ time grinding paywall in mainstream AAA gaming. It’s gross. And yet…it’s Star Wars!
I hate this. I hate that my favorite hobby has been held hostage over and over again in the past few years. If this was some other IP, any other IP, it would be easy. But…EA has probably long since counted on that. I hate this.
I just head butted a dude to death with a Tauntan as he was about to fire a rocket at our AT-AT walker. So that’s kinda awesome.
I don’t understand this obsession with “pay to win grinding” when 75% of the time when you die in a Battlefield game you had no chance whatsoever – someone got behind you, or got the drop on you, or you were just in a bad place at a bad time.
If this was competitive olympic 1 on 1 Quake some tiny edge might make the difference, maybe, but battlefield? If you think a slightly enhanced X is gonna make anyone unbeatable in Battlefield, I have some bad news for you.
